DIALOGUE WITH AN ATHEIST: PART 7

Below is the last correspondence the two of us had on the subject. As far as I know, he is still a non-believer. This is a demonstration that apologetics can only take one so far. For even if all objections to a theistic worldview have been met, there are still non-logical reasons remaining that may keep a person from faith. To make this final dialogue a little more understandable, I have included by friend's comments in bold. 

I don't understand why it's grasping at straws (etc.) to say that free will, though unexplained today, might someday be explained by naturalistic processes.

In the first place, I fully accept your “might.” Secondly, forgive me for tweaking you, but I was merely turning the tables on those (perhaps not yourself) who characterize theists as ignorant boobs who have no idea what logical thought entails and rely solely on feelings and wishful thinking to justify their belief in an entity who cannot be observed by the physical senses. I hope you see that in actuality there is not that much difference ultimately in thought or belief processes between those who “feel” that there must be a God and those who “feel” that there must be a way to preserve their own free will in the absence of God and the absence of any other present explanation.

You seem to be claiming that naturalism implies determinism. You said that for naturalistic explanations, "given identical operating factors, two given people would act in exactly the same manner as one another all the time." But that isn't even true of electrons. Quantum mechanics is simply not a deterministic theory. And some people (though not me) even think that consciousness and free will are strongly related to quantum mechanics.

I fully agree with you that quantum mechanics does not relate directly to free will. That extrapolation is akin to deriving Social Darwinism from Charles Darwin's teachings. At most, quantum mechanics may provide a possible antecedent model for your hypothetical theory regarding free will. The literature on this general subject is voluminous, and much of it (I admit) way beyond me. For example, you might be very interested in reading http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/ , which seems to provide ammunition for both our competing points of view. To support mine, it states the obvious fact that quantum mechanics is only “random” on a microscopic level, and certainly not on a macroscopic one. Therefore your statement “But that isn't even true of electrons” should more properly say “But that is only true of electrons.” Also, there is a stream of thought that denies any randomness to quantum mechanics even on that level (witness the strange phenomenon in which one paired particle seems to influence at a distance the other one so that if one particle is free to act randomly, the other member of the pair has no “free will.”), and certainly not to other laws of nature—which are generally accepted as being deterministic. In addition, the above article actually attempts to show that quantum mechanics itself provides one of the strongest proofs for absolute causality in the universe, albeit a strange one in which cause and effect may also run backwards in time as well as forward.

“I also think that belief in causality & the objectivity of reality need not (and cannot) be predicated on an ability to explain subatomic phenomena based on analogies to macroscopic phenomena. A belief in causality & objective reality which incorporates an acknowledgment that the behavior of subatomic particles must inevitably be somewhat strange when compared to our macroscopic world represents a pragmatic synthesis of 'predictivism' and 'realism'": The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics by Ben Best

As to Occam's Razor, ... it looks to me like Occam's advice isn't all that useful in many of the "curiosity"cases, because of the difficulty of agreeing on how many entities are necessary.

I agree with you wholly in this case since that was actually the point I was attempting to make in my roundabout way; good detailed analysis on your part.

You're right that my view of morality starts from some sort of axioms that are skewed toward a non-poor, non-religious, Western point of view.

In this regard, there is an interesting article by Sharon Begley in the latest Newsweek (March 1) summarizing some of the latest experiments in the area of “cultural neuroscience.” The article concludes, “It is important to push the analysis to the level of the brain. Especially when it shows how fundamental cultural differences are—so fundamental, perhaps, that 'universal' notions such as human rights, democracy, and the like may be no such thing.” I believe that was my contention in my last letter.

A person viewing things that way is happy to support a libertarian-like morality which emphasizes "don't initiate force" or "you leave me alone and I'll leave you alone."

Of course, such laissez faire morality falls far short of the behavior which actually initiates good toward another person rather than just letting him alone, whatever the State might decide to do about situations of inequality.

Actually, I'm not sure I'm entirely clear of what you mean by absolute morality. You take moral axioms as coming from someplace outside the human race; I take them as coming from introspection regarding the most important needs of one's self and one's "people"; but might those two approaches converge on similar rules for behavior in most cases?

My own definition of absolute morality basically means that it came from an Absolute source, not one culturally determined. And, yes, the two approaches may in a number of cases give the same results because of sheer chance, or because both are valid approaches, or because your introspection is biased by the largely Judeo-Christian society you grew up in, or because of some spark of divinely inspired conscience implanted in you. The New Testament even speaks to such a situation by stating that some people by their very nature or by following their own conscience will fulfill God's law even if they have never heard of it.

What are your answers to the soldier, hangman and self-defense questions?

From a biblical point of view, there are a few considerations to begin with. First, understanding the Old Testament command not to kill begins with a proper definition of the Hebrew word for “kill.” It basically means to murder in cold blood and is different from other Hebrew words that describe a legally mandated execution for crimes, causing a death during battle, or manslaughter. Jesus went to the heart of the matter when he basically replaced this absolute command with the statement that whoever was angry with another person was guilty of murder. I realize that this does not really form a firm basis for decisions of morality in all cases, but then Christianity is not mainly an ethical religion. By going to the motive behind the action, Jesus instituted what might be called situational ethics, but not in the lax sense in which that term is usually employed.

Soldier: This subject was controversial even in the 1st century church. The New Testament letters mention several soldiers who served Rome even after they converted to Christianity without condemning them for their actions. I know a number of Christians who have served voluntarily in the Armed Forces and I would not question their morality at all since they seemed to have done it more from a defensive than offensive view. Personally, I would try to avoid any possible future moral conflicts that would inevitably arise from serving in the military by not enlisting and trying my best to avoid the draft (which we were both successful in doing).

Hangman (or juror in a capital offense trial): The Old Testament is, of course, replete with examples and teachings that support execution for a number of offenses. The historical situation was one in which there were no convenient ways to lock up and maintain a prisoner. Thus, society could only be preserved from their future actions by execution or fining them. The New Testament has nothing to say on the matter since the early Christians were not in a position to enforce any form of capital executions. One exception is the NT story in which Jesus prevents a crowd of self-righteous teachers from stoning an adulterous woman, even though that was the penalty for that offense according to Jewish law. That leaves us with more general principles and guidelines to fall back on. Basically, physical life is not as important as one's eternal soul. Therefore the Christian thing to do would be to lock a person up rather than kill him since there is always the real possibility of true repentance over time (attested by several of my friends who carry out prison ministries).

Self-Defense: Again, I would probably reach the same conclusion you would in this case. It is hard (but not impossible) to imagine a situation in which an aggressor to one's family or person could not be stopped except by killing him. Calling the police, locking one's self in a safe place, forcibly restraining the attacker, using psychology on him, or even maiming him would all appear to be reasonable alternatives. You may ask: don't some of these approaches contradict sayings of Christ regarding “turning the other cheek” or “going the extra mile?” Not if you consider the context of these sayings. In neither case was one's own life in jeopardy, in neither case was another innocent party involved, and in both cases the motive is stated to be an attempt to convert the attitude of a merely annoying and unloving person by shaming them through your non-aggressive response. None of these factors applies in the typical self-defense scenario.

Hard-to-explain phenomena: I must disagree on the one about the time factors necessary for biotic evolution.

Since you did not mention the other phenomena I threw out, I would assume that they fall into the category of things you have faith that science will eventually be able to explain. Fair enough. Regarding time, I obviously do not believe in an earth that is only a few thousand years old. However, you may be surprised to learn that it is by no means universally accepted by scientists and mathematicians that a 4.5 billion year old earth provides enough time to account for the initial origin of life or the present diversity and complexity of species utilizing random Darwinian processes. Thus we see the efforts to push the ultimate origin of life to another universe to escape this difficulty (as well as the so far insolvable problem of monochirality). Just a few typical articles are shown below (The last one may be from a Christian source so you may not trust it, but it certainly demonstrates Fred Hoyle's firm belief that life could not have originated on earth and some of the problems with his own proposed solution.)

1. http://journalofcosmology.com/SearchForLife123.html on lack of enough time to account for purely evolutionary mechanisms to account for life's origin on earth with only 4.5 billion years available.

2. ttp://beta.springerlink.com/content/hx7532v250081w20/ on unlikelihood of homochirality of biomolecules originating on earth, whatever the time frame..

3. http://home.wxs.nl/~gkorthof/kortho46.htm on Fred Hoyle's proposals

" the histories of three revolutions" An interesting point, but I think more examples are necessary. Another feature that distinguishes the American Revolution on one hand from the French and Russian revolutions on the other is the distinction between a remote colonial regime refusing to be ruled by the mother country (and violently resisting the armed forces of the mother country) versus the violent overthrow of the "homeland" government.

The distinction is not as great as you make it out to be since the American Revolution could almost be characterized as a civil war in that there were many loyalists in America who sided with England in addition to those specifically serving on behalf of the English government on American soil at the time. I should read the book you cited on democracies and peace, but offhand it sounds as if he adds so many qualifiers as to what constitutes a true democracy that I can't believe he is left with many concrete examples to cite. And it still doesn't answer the question as to why democracies, such as our own, have seemed to be hellbent on waging war on so many non-aggressing nations or peoples.

Also, I'm pleased to see that “peace between states” is not the only criterion worth consideration since forcible interference in another state's governmental processes, which you morally justify, certainly qualifies as breaking the peace.

Utilitarian issues make moral questions much more complicated.

I agree with you on the messiness of dealing with such complicated issues in a real world situation. But I would take issue with you on one statement: “the system of sovereign states is probably responsible for most of the immorality (by anyone's definition) in the world.” Even without a single discrete nation or tribe on the face of the earth, I'm convinced that evil, in all its guises, would still proliferate and that political solutions can, at most, only put a band-aid on the situation..

Interesting Afterthought

I usually don't quote from news magazines or consider them the last word on a subject, but the Newsweek issue I mentioned above had another very interesting summary of an amazing archeological find in Turkey by Klaus Schmidt. Here are a few selected quotes from the article:

“Schmidt has uncovered a vast and beautiful temple complex, a structure so ancient that it may be the very first thing human beings ever built. The site isn't just old, it redefines old: the temple was built 11,300 years ago.

In fact, Schmidt thinks the temple itself, built after the end of the last Ice Age by hunter-gatherers, became that ember--the spark that launched mankind toward farming, urban life, and all that followed.

Schmidt's thesis is simple and bold; it was the urge to worship that brought mankind together in the very first urban conglomerations...The temple begat the city. This theory reverses a standard chronology of human origins [in which religion was the culmination of a long process of civilization].

Religion now appears so early in civilized life--earlier than civilized life, if Schmidt is correct--that some think it may be less a product of culture than a cause of it, less a revelation than a genetic inheritance.”